Wednesday, November 12, 2014

How to achieve truly international cooperation?

Too many social scientists are busy with maintaining or improving their position and/or of that of the organisation they are working for. This prevents truly international cooperation and stimulates work that is geared towards defending certain 'scientific' positions or postures or stances and often results in analyses that come close to propaganda or whitewashing existing policies -- without making explicit that they serve that interest.

Maybe this unfortunate state of affairs is in particular present in economic policy analyses and is less present in fundamental economic research that makes explicit the assumptions of the research.

To apply my thought on the need for a better world economic system: how could we stimulate social scientists to work jointly -- regardless of the interests of individuals and institutions -- on a plan that suggests how the world economic system could be improved?

Obviously, such a plan needs to be discussed democratically, by all nations. And obviously, this should be done in a truly democratic way and not in the current way in which people are degradated and used as a flock of animals who, by voting in elections, serve to legitimise current unequality, poverty and economic and social injustice.

About Me

As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org